Big Dummy's Guide To The Internet Part 10

P Goes to the previous subscribed newsgroup with unread articles.

G news.group Goes to a specific newsgroup. Can be used to subscribe to new newsgroups. Hitting G brings up a sub-menu:

u Goes to the group and shows only un-read articles.

a Goes to the group and shows all articles, even ones you've already read.

s Will show you only articles with a specific subject.

n Will show you only articles from a specific person.

M Mails a copy of the current article to somebody. You'll be asked for the recipient's e-mail address and whether you want to add any comments to the article before sending it off. As with F, puts you in the default editor.

:post Post an article. You'll be asked for the name of the group.

Q Quit, or exit, nn.

U Un-subscribe from the current newsgroup.

R Responds to an article via e-mail.

s.p.a.ce Hitting the s.p.a.ce bar brings up the next page of articles.

X If you have selected articles, this will show them to you and then take you to the next subscribed newsgroup with unread articles. If you don't have any selected articles, it marks all articles as read and takes you to the next unread subscribed newsgroup.

=word Finds and marks all articles in the newsgroup with a specific word in the "subject:" line, for example:

=modem

Z Shows you selected articles immediately and then returns you to the current newsgroup.

? Brings up a help screen.

< goes="" to="" the="" previous="" page="" in="" the="">

> Goes to the next page in the newsgroup.

$ Goes to the last page in an article.

^ Goes to the first page in an article.

3.4 USING rn

Some folks prefer this older newsreader.

If you type

rn news.announce.newusers

at your host system's command line, you'll see something like this:

******** 21 unread articles in news.announce.newusers--read now? [ynq]

If you hit your Y key, the first article will appear on your screen. If you want to see what articles are available first, though, hit your computer's = key and you'll get something like this:

152 Introduction to news.announce 153 A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community 154 What is Usenet?

155 Answers to Frequently Asked Questions 156 Hints on writing style for Usenet 158 Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies, Part I 159 Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies, Part II 160 Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette 161 USENET Software: History and Sources 162 A Guide to Social Newsgroups and Mailing Lists 163 How to Get Information about Networks 164 How to Create a New Newsgroup 169 List of Active Newsgroups 170 List of Moderators 171 Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part I 172 Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part II 173 Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part III 174 How to become a USENET site 175 List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part I 176 List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part II 177 List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part III End of article 158 (of 178)--what next? [npq]

Notice how the messages are in numerical order this time, and don't tell you who sent them. Article 154 looks interesting. To read it, type in 154 and hit enter. You'll see something like this:

Article 154 (20 more) in news.announce.newusers (moderated): From: [email protected] (Gene Spafford) Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers,news.admin,news.answers Subject: What is Usenet?

Date: 20 Sep 92 04:17:26 GMT Followup-To: news.newusers.questions Organization: Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ.

Lines: 353 Supersedes:

Archive-name: what-is-usenet/part1 Original from: [email protected] (Chip Salzenberg) Last-change: 19 July 1992 by [email protected] (Gene Spafford)

The first thing to understand about Usenet is that it is widely misunderstood. Every day on Usenet, the "blind men and the elephant"

phenomenon is evident, in spades. In my opinion, more flame wars arise because of a lack of understanding of the nature of Usenet than from any other source. And consider that such flame wars arise, of necessity, among people who are on Usenet. Imagine, then, how poorly understood Usenet must be by those outside!

--MORE--(7%)

This time, the header looks much more like the gobbledygook you get in e-mail messages. To keep reading, hit your s.p.a.ce bar. If you hit your n key (lower case), you'll go to the next message in the numerical order.

To escape rn, just keep hitting your q key (in lower case), until you get back to the command line. Now let's set up your reading list.

Because rn uses the same .newsrc file as nn, you can use one of the search-and-replace methods described above. Or you can do this: Type

rn

and hit enter. When the first newsgroup comes up on your screen, hit your u key (in lower case). Hit it again, and again, and again. Or just keep it pressed down (if your computer starts beeping, let up for a couple of seconds). Eventually, you'll be told you're at the end of the newsgroups, and asked what you want to do next.

Here's where you begin entering newsgroups. Type

g newsgroup

(for example, g comp.sys.mac.announce) and hit enter. You'll be asked if you want to "subscribe." Hit your y key. Then type

g next newsgroup

(for example, g comp.announce.newusers) and hit enter. Repeat until done. This process will also set up your reading list for nn, if you prefer that newsreader. But how do you know which newsgroups to subscribe? Typing a lowercase l and then hitting enter will show you a list of all available newsgroups. Again, since there could be more than 2,000 newsgroups on your system, this might not be something you want to do. Fortunately, you can search for groups with particular words in their names, using the l command. Typing

l mac

followed by enter, will bring up a list of newsgroups with those letters in them (and as in nn, you will also see groups dealing with emacs and the like, in addition to groups related to Macintosh computers).

Because of the vast amount of messages transmitted over Usenet, most systems carry messages for only a few days or weeks. So if there's a message you want to keep, you should either turn on your computer's screen capture or save it to a file which you can later download). To save a message as a file in rn, type

s filename

where filename is what you want to call the file. Hit enter. You'll be asked if you want to save it in "mailbox format." In most cases, you can answer with an n (which will strip off the header). The message will now be saved to a file in your News directory (which you can access by typing cd News and then hitting enter).